


Perceptual expectancy

by Selanda



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Prophetic Dreams, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:18:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selanda/pseuds/Selanda
Summary: This is a recurring dream I’ve had for the past few weeks. It’s told from my perspective, as I remember experiencing it. I tried to piece it together as fluidly as possible.Perceptual expectancyis a predisposition to perceive things in a certain way.





	Perceptual expectancy

**Author's Note:**

> For about the last 15 years, I’ve had frequent déjà vu experiences. They come as snippets of dreams, contextless little moments, that sneak up on me at some indeterminate future moment where I find the context.

I’m driving home. I can’t tell if it’s from work or somewhere else. I’m alone in the car.

The sky is overcast, with just a hint of after-rain sunshine to the west. This is somewhat typical late-summer conditions for this area. The road surface looks dry, it doesn’t appear to have rained recently. It’s either afternoon or late afternoon.

The windows were up. I don’t remember if the sunroof was open. I think I was wearing my seatbelt. 

I remember there being music, but I don’t remember what was playing on the car stereo.

I’m two blocks from home. Despite having a traffic light, it’s a bad intersection. Everyone knows it’s hard to see oncoming vehicles from the main road. Drivers on the main road frequently run their red light and strike vehicles coming into the intersection from the cross street. The main road is two lanes, both westbound. The cross street is two lanes, one northbound through the intersection and the other turning westbound onto the main road.

I’m the first car in line at the traffic light on the cross street. I’m patiently waiting my turn.

The traffic light changes; the main road is red, my cross street is green. I hesitate to pull out, like every driver does coming out from that spot, until I see the car in the lane closest to me come to a stop for their red light. The far lane is empty and I can’t see any oncoming traffic through the parked cars on the side of the main road. 

I edge my car out into the intersection slowly. As I begin to accelerate over the small hump in the middle of the intersection my car is struck violently on the passenger’s side by a vehicle that ran the red light. It had come up the far lane, I hadn’t seen it, and it hit me. I’m not sure what kind of vehicle it is; sometimes it’s another car, sometimes it’s a large pickup, sometimes it’s a tractor-trailer. It’s the most inconsistent bit of the dream.

The first thing I experience is the sound metal giving under the stress of the impact. With it, a great force shoving my car through the intersection. My head hits the driver’s side window hard enough to fracture the glass before the side airbags deploy. The sudden pain in the side of my head stuns me for a moment and everything is happening in slow motion: watching the world tumble around through the cracking windshield, realizing the outside is stationary and my car is rolling over, seeing the driver’s airbag inflate towards me, feeling the airbag strike my chest, feeling weightless as the seatbelt strains to hold me into my seat, more sounds of bending metal and crunching plastic. 

My car has come to rest at an angle, almost on the driver’s side but the chassis is twisted so the driver’s door isn’t completely against the ground. It’s eerily quiet considering the barrage of input I just processed. I feel ‘detached’ - like I’m looking at the scene through a camera that’s panning around the wreckage before the world cuts to commercial.

I watch my body slump limply in the driver’s seat. The music plays uninterrupted by the chaos.

Still disconnected from my body, I see people start to run toward the wreckage. I see them yanking on the doors, trying to get to me. The driver that struck me exits their vehicle, standing awkwardly in the middle of the intersection unsure of what to do. I’m floating further back away from the scene as I faintly hear someone scream “somebody call an ambulance!” 

As if turning off an old TV, suddenly I’m engulfed in an inky black nothingness. It’s warm, almost comforting, but at the same time vastly empty. There are no stars dotting the skyscape. No wind. No sounds. 

I see my body floating through this anechoic nothingness, curled into myself as if in utero. It made me think of when your GPS can’t get a fix and it puts your marker out in the middle of an ocean.

There is no concept of time here. I have no idea how long I drift for before I lose sight of my suspended form in the blackness.

Suddenly I feel intense gravity. My limbs have weight again, my chest feels heavy. 

As I start coming to I realize I’m no longer floating, now lying supine on a soft surface. Too soft to be a gurney or a hospital bed, not soft enough to be a feather bed. A couch perhaps?

I slowly open my eyes. I’m in what looks like an office of some sort. More importantly, I’m seeing it through my eyes now instead of third-party from a distance. It’s comfortably warm in the room. 

As I’m about to try raising my head I see a man stroll leisurely towards me and stop to my left, just next to my head. 

“Oh, this won’t do…” I hear a familiar voice remark. British… Refined, definitely an upper class air about him… Welsh? It can’t be… No…

He huffs impatiently as I turn my head towards him to get a better look. 

As my eyes travel up his form I see his left arm extend forward slightly as he snaps the fingers of his right hand. A large book materializes in his open palm, opening itself and flipping to a specific page. From down here it looks ancient, well-used, and slightly ragged about the edges. Like a more refined version of Winifred’s ‘Book’ from Hocus Pocus.

I realize I’m lying just above knee-height next to a man wearing pressed black trousers, a matching black jacket, with a hint of deep burgundy shirtsleeve poking out beyond the jacket cuffs.

I groan lightly as I try to lift my head but find my neck muscles uncooperative. The sound gets his attention. 

“You’re early,” he states flatly. “This simply won’t do at all!” Snapping the book shut it vanishes back to wherever it was conjured from.

Everything feels heavy, I can’t lift any of my limbs. I turn my head toward him, finally daring to identify the voice. “Luci?” 

I’m by no means religious, I’m a severely lapsed Roman Catholic turned pagan of a good kind, but I really never expected to be getting the ‘Welcome to Hell’ speech from a guy that looks like Tom Ellis’ interpretation of Lucifer. And especially not starting with being told I’ve arrived early!

He sighs, putting his finger tips daintily to his forehead in the most gentlemanly of facepalms. “This again” he mutters to himself.

“Were you expecting someone else?” he remarks with a dramatic flair.

Snapping his fingers his appearance changes suddenly to the Robot Devil from Futurama. “How about this?” speaks Beelzebot, in Maurice LaMarche’s voice. 

Snap. Now a towering red figure wearing cartoonish black shorts, South Park’s Satan. “Were you expecting this perhaps?” sounding every bit the character in Trey Parker’s voice. 

As I shake my head side to side apprehensively, he snaps again returning to the crisply-tailored Tom Ellis doppelganger and begins brushing away invisible wrinkles from the front of his suit jacket.

“Right then…” he starts, back to the familiar lilt. “To make this more interesting, I show up as whatever you expect ‘me’ to look like.” He pauses waiting for my response, I remain quiet. “Many forms and all that…” He gestures dismissively. “Terrifies most people, but not you. No, you’re special.” I have no response to this revelation. What makes me so special?

After a few seconds of silence, “No matter, you’re dreadfully early and that simply won’t do.” He sounds inconvenienced. 

“Your office isn’t ready yet.” My office? I get an office? A little worry crosses my face. Am I doomed to an eternity of paperwork? Tech support for Hell? I wrinkle my eyebrows a little as I watch him pace next to me. Maybe it’s a managerial position? Would I be overseeing punishments? Does Hell even have a management structure? So many questions...

His voice rattles me from my thoughts, “You’ll just have to go back,” he says, lightly shaking his head. Go back?

He gently brushes a stray tuft of hair from my forehead, “This might be a little unpleasant.” His hand comes to rest atop my left shoulder. The touch is warm and inviting, gentle and comforting.

Suddenly I gasp, jolting awake and trying to sit up. My lungs feel like they’re on fire. The soft couch is now cold asphalt, lumpy and sharp beneath my body. As bystanders gawk I try to regain my breath. People keep asking if I’m okay, so many voices, I don’t answer any of them. Bystanders from the nearby church at the corner are shouting “Thank God!” and “It’s a miracle!” as they hug each other. “Not quite” I mumble as I try to sit up further.

Someone puts a hand on the back of my left shoulder trying to hold me sitting upright. It feels cold and prickly; I quickly brush their hand away with an air of disgust. 

My shirt hangs torn from my chest and there’s blood staining my pants. My chest feels like a giant tried to do CPR on a mouse. I learn further forward, trying to lessen the pain. A wave of nausea washes over me leaving a weird sick feeling. Not like a physical sick but more like an ‘untethered from reality’ sick.

I follow the path of blood smears back to my car. My car sits bent and broken about 10 yards to my right. I’m sitting in the middle of the roadway, surrounded by murmuring bystanders and emergency personnel. There’s a LOT of blood. 

The last thing I remember is looking past the wreckage and seeing my husband running towards the scene.


End file.
